then, WOW this actually tastes like one of my worst! Looks can be very deceiving my friends. Ditched my 6-1 tomatoes and went with a tomato paste base for this one and was not very pleased with the results at all. Amazing how just the sauce can change the whole pizza taste.

Yeah. Tough break. Sauces can be tough, but any ingredient can mess up a great looking pizza.I've had a deep dish pizza go south in the flavor department when I used some not-so-fresh italian sausage that had been previously frozen and sat in my fridge just a little too long. Fresh is best.

I haven't perfected my sauce for thin crust yet, but I can tell you that if the sauce doesn't taste right before you put it on a pizza, it probably won't taste right after you bake it. Tomato paste is pretty concentrated. Maybe try puree or crushed next time. :-)

My last attempt at a thin crust sauce used a whole can of 6-in-1 ground tomatoes, a can of glen muir pizza sauce,a bit of basil, a good squeeze of sriracha rooster hot sauce, and a good amount of sugar. I had to keep stirring and tasting as I added more sugar to get the right balance.It was good, but next time I'm going to try leaving out the canned sauce.

What vcb said is true: one thing can throw off the whole pie. When I couldn't get good sausage, I just stopped making pizza (until I learned to make my own sausage from scratch). Without the good sausage, every pizza would end in disappointment. I knew exactly how it was supposed to taste-- the recipe was down pat otherwise.

Anyway, I hope his wasn't my sauce recipe. Well, if it was and you didn't like it, no matter. But I will say this--echoing vcb's comment--paste is a tricky beast. It is so concentrated and carmelized. My sauce recipe has tons of herbs and spices in the paste because that's what Pizza Factory used but also because it wouldn't be balanced otherwise.

If you weren't using my sauce recipe, I urge you to give it a try and then experiment on your own from there. But it should show you how a paste based sauce can be achieved (again, assuming you didn't already try it and that's what you're hating on here).

I hope you memorized your bake procedure on that pie because man that first pic is a thing of beauty! :chef:I think I'd keep that lil bit of cheddar in the mix too.Great looking pizza.....thanks for the pics.I use a stick blender on my crushed, ground tomato products and for a Chicago thin I will sometimes even add a small amount of water to thin it down to a more NY slice type sauce consistency.Salt, pepper, oregano...not much else...sometimes garlic powder,sometimes a lil Parmesan. Play around with it...you're doing great!

Chicago Bob is right: that pizza is a thing of beauty. With those pictures, you should have just lied to us and said it was your best ever.

Sauce is the hardest thing to get down. It was only through good fortune that I took up my Pizza Factory efforts as a younger man--young enough and a flexible enough life to make and eat pizza five times a week for an entire summer until we got the sauce down pat. That's a lot of trial an error. Nowadays, as a family many more than a decade older and busier than ever, making pizza once a week would be a lot. IOW, it takes me forever to tweak something, to put it through various iterations. To try a new recipe four or five times could take several months. That's why this forum is so great: just about anyone can pick up vcb's or BTB's deep dish recipes and make a mind-blowing pizza from the very first time out of the gate (assuming they know their way around the kitchen, their own oven, etc.).